The skies had already darkened significantly by the time I left the guild. But when I looked down at the streets, the protesters were still gathered at full strength. If anything, I was sure there might have been even more now. The air also smelled distinctly of instant ramen seasoning packets and I just knew that a few of the Arcanians were probably boiling their own pots of water by applying their fire artes. I had eaten my fair share of noodles cooked this way in the past.

"Everybody's gotta eat."

And as if on cue, I could feel a tinge of hunger strike me with the thought. It reminded me that I needed to eat too. The night was still young. I could have my pick of anything tonight. As for what I was craving… fine dining was definitely a no go. I felt that maybe something more in the line of a Hong Kong style cafe would be good, where I could easily get a quick bite to eat and go without much of a hassle. Though, with a moment of thought, I realized that I was wanting something with a more impactful flavor profile. As for where I could go for that, there was only one real option.

"Street food at the night market it is then!"

I fished out my phone to call a taxi, but something else caught my eyes first as I woke up the screen.

[You have 1 new message.]

As I rarely received text messages from others, the notification was certainly something that piqued my curiosity. When I opened the message, I could tell that it was from Canaria, though I did notice that it was from several hours ago.

(Canaria) [Hi, Mister Edmond! This is Canaria! Thank you so much again for today! I look forward to the next time we can meet each other again!]

"Let's see. How should I respond back?"

After a few seconds of consideration, I decided to respond with a simple thumbs up emoji. I wanted to be careful not to come off as too indifferent or cold of a person to her, so a thumbs up emoji was probably the safest bet. It did take a certain kind of person to use emojis after all, and for the longest time they were something I actively refused to use.

A little "seen" notification showed up at the bottom of my message soon after I had hit send. A brief moment later, Canaria began to type something back, though it seemed like she was going to take her time thinking about what to say. Just as I was about to switch to the taxi app, a picture was uploaded along with a short message.

(Canaria) [Enjoy your evening! You can message me at any time and it'll be A-OK!]

It was a selfie of her waving at me from inside a ramen shop. Naturally, I followed back with two quick messages of my own.

(Edmond) [You too]

(Edmond) [Feel free to message me at any time. I don't mind]

"Was that too formal?" I contemplated slightly. I had already sent the message though. "Ah, well, it'll be fine."

Well… I decided to add just one more message.

(Edmond) [Ramen looks good. I think I'm going to go get some food now, so I'll talk to you later]

(Canaria) [Pictures please!]

(Edmond) [Sure]

"This girl…" I shook my head. She was a whole different person when she talked through a screen.

…

…

Of the Arcanian immigrants who crossed over through the rifts, they were divided into two main groups. The first were the brave who worked with the guild as emergency relief to secure rift events and to protect people in the event of an outbreak. The second group were the civilian non-combatants who came over as part of cultural exchange programs. These were the families and friends who followed along and who ended up providing the cuisines, clothes, and services of their homeland. In the ecosystem of Arcanian immigrants, they were every bit just as important as the fighters as they were key to maintaining the spiritual and mental well-being of those who were so far away from home.

After all, where else would one go to have food and alcohol prepared the proper way? Or where would one go to have their horns polished or fur groomed for a special occasion? Just like how one would not go to an American restaurant to have authentic Chinese cuisine, there were things which only a professional could do right.

Apart from these two groups, there was also a much lesser third group of Arcanians who had crossed the rift for the sole purpose of research and development. They focused primarily on the field of aether based technologies– aethertech for short. The internet's beloved archmagus 'Professor Dumbledore' was the one celebrity of this field. Our science had been built upon thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and the other world's Arcanian artes were no different. His presence was akin to bringing a fire in a dark cave where prior we could only tell what we were grasping with our hands. Without his aid, perhaps it would have taken another several hundred years before the first stable rift connected to Arca Archa could have been opened.

Naturally, the technological exchange went both ways. There were also many human researchers from Earth who were now on Arca Archa. Though, progress was staggeringly slow as they lacked a lot of the infrastructures and human resources of a society that had already gone through an age of enlightenment and scientific revolution.

…

The night market was a place filled with a myriad of colorful lights and mouth watering smells. It was also a place where a maze of stalls occupied every bit of freespace by the roadside. Right away, I could tell that most of the people here were Arcanians with their distinctive features being shown openly without shame. As a human, I stood out for sure, but even so, it was a place that I felt very much at home in. I had someone very important to me to thank for that.

I smiled. My sense of smell was being overwhelmed by the deep savory and sweet notes wafting to my nose. When I looked over to the source, I saw a stall selling skewers of barbequed meat. I walked over and waved down the Sakliu man grilling behind the counter. The man's ears, which were round like a mouse's, twitched as he heard the sound of my shoes and he glanced at me through the rising smoke.

"Two char siu skewers," I told him right away.

"Five Argentum for two! Ten Argentum for five!" hollering this, the Sakliu man asked me again if I still wanted just two skewers.

"Yes, just two." Five was too much. Seeing as how I had already made the trip here, I definitely wanted to eat more than just char siu for dinner. The way I was feeling, maybe I would have a drink, a bun, and maybe a rice dish if there was any.

"Yes sir, yes sir, coming right up!"

Then, with quick movements honed by his many years of repeated motions, he tossed up two skewers with a flick of his wrist, grabbed a square of parchment paper from the counter, and caught the skewers in the air after it had spun around twice.

"Enjoy!"

With a beep confirming the five Argentum I had sent through scanning the stall's payment barcode, I took the skewers and decided to eat one of them on the spot. However, just as I was about to tear a piece off, I remembered something I had to do first. I had almost forgotten that I had promised Canaria that I would take some pictures of my food tonight.

*Snap*

I snapped a photo using the "food" mode that came with the default camera app before quickly taking a bite of the char siu.

Sweet, savory, sticky, meaty, juicy, and with just a bit of char on the glaze. It was absolutely delicious to this me who was on an empty stomach. Well, it would have been good even if I had not been on an empty stomach, but hunger was such a powerful spice that could even make hardtack taste good. Finishing the skewer neatly, I immediately went on to eat the second one.

"That was really good."

Like a flood gate being opened, my appetite that had been suppressed until just recently was fully unleashed. Hurriedly, I began walking towards the other stalls to check out my next bite of food. Chili crabs, spring rolls, wok fried noodles, curry fish balls, fried radish cake, laksa, roti, hainanese chicken, durian, young coconut, pineapples, thai tea, crepes— crepes?

"One durian crepe."

Crepes. I bought a dessert crepe to eat for my second dish, filled with whipped cream and durian fruit. There was no rule against eating sweets at the beginning of a meal. To hell with that. Half the time, desserts came first when ordering at a dim sum place anyway. If the first thing I saw in the fridge was leftover cake, I would gladly have it for breakfast as well.

*Snap*

The smell of durian hit my nose like a heavy wave. It was strong, but it was not repulsive. I was used to the smell. As a matter of fact, I have always told people who were trying it for the first time that they would stop smelling it after their first bite. Albeit, the responses from those people were still mixed at best. It was hard to enjoy the taste of something that a person was psychologically repulsed by. Still, I enjoyed the taste of it very much.

Sweet, creamy, light and airy, and filled with the flavor of durian— one bite, two bites, three bites, and a fourth— it was finished in a flash. I wiped my mouth with the piece of napkin paper that came with the crepe and already my eyes began to search for the next stall to visit.

"I'm not even close to being full yet!"

…

Even though the events of today had been nothing short of life changing– finding out that Verrethia had been alive all this time, how she had joined the neo Arcanian Liberators, and realizing just what she must have gone through to survive inside the labyrinth of N'gothla– I still found myself eating food out here to my heart's content. Even though I had made such a powerful vow back there, like how I would even sacrifice the world in order to bring Verretheia back, I was still stuffing my face here without a sense of urgency.

However, this was something I needed to do. The past twenty years had not been kind to me, and to be entirely honest, I had slacked off completely. There was nothing in this life of mine that I had been living for me to be proud to show Verretheia. But knowing her still, she would not have been upset at me for regressing the way I did. She was never the kind of person who would judge another compared to the standards she set for herself. That was just the kind of person I had fallen in love with, and this was all the more reason why I needed to do what I was doing now.

This was my chapter's end— a way for me to mark the end of this chapter of my life, which had been filled with nothing but hedonistic indulgences of someone who abandoned all his responsibilities and retreated from the world. I knew that when next I awoke, things would be different for me and I would have to become a much different man from the one I was now. That was why, even if this felt like the wrong thing to do, I had to do it, so I could properly move on.

…

Little did I actually know though, when next I woke, things really would be different.

Just… not in the way I would have ever expected it to.

…

…

(Prelude End)